


We Could Be Gentle

by consecrated



Category: Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo
Genre: Could Be Read As Less Than Platonic, Gen, M/M, Platonic Relationships, Recreational Drug Use, Shotgunning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-25 20:13:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14984738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/consecrated/pseuds/consecrated
Summary: A Concept: Spike Spiegel and Mugen get stoned and bond over being repressed.They've been worn down by their own devised ways of surviving the lives they'd been forced to lead. Calluses can only get you so far, can only protect you from so much. The spirit needs a release, exhaustion and intoxication allows their bodies and spirits to come to the realization that there's strength in softness.





	We Could Be Gentle

It wasn’t uncommon for the ship Bebop to spend an extended period of time stationary, but for it’s two current occupants, themselves remaining still was something strange. Irregular. It was rare for them to find peace in stasis or stagnation. Of all things earthly and beyond, they were wandering creatures, two men prone to constantly being on the move.

The air was thick and heavy with stale smoke that hung loose about the storage room. A mingle of several scents created a unique atmosphere, sweet, sharp, acrid, and warm. The smell of engine grease, a lingering waft of cloves from choji oil, cigarette smoke that mingled with earthy cannabis, all filled the small confines of the storage room who’s floor the two men sat on. It was comfortable sometimes to be in discomfort. There was a sense of self awareness found in the wish for a window to open, for a fresh breeze to stir air, in the feeling of being content with the knowledge that this wasn’t a possibility. It didn’t have to be smothering. If it was unavoidable, why suffer? Let it be cozy, warm, intoxicating. Sink into it. Breathe it.

Both men were armed, a clean semi-automatic pistol tucked in the coat of one, and a strange sword strapped to the back of the other. It was important to each that their weapons be close to them, not out of concern for danger, but as security items such as that a child would cling to. 

The slightly taller but more slender in his form, with his gaze half lidded, gestured to something behind his companion’s head, requesting a lighter that felt foreign in the other's hand as he reached back and passed it over. Mugen came from raw fire, from living in dust and making things yourself. The flashy, materialistic world of space and technology didn’t make sense to him, and neither did the lighter Spike now used to relight his cigarette.

Spike snorted smoke out his nose and offered a slow, wide grin. Languid body language and hazy gaze the pinnacle of sprezzatura, effortlessly at ease and yet Mugen himself could see the coiled tension deep within. Few could. Just as few could see the simple sadness inside the Ryukyuan vagabond, only the blind and the damned seemed able to get past the layers of coarse personality.

Smooth, rough.

Children with no parents to protect them, having to find power in whatever they could. A street urchin from Mars schooling his expression as he casually knocks into a passerby and with a slight of hand steals their valuables. An innocent born amongst dangerous criminals on Earth’s far distant sister planet, having to assimilate into the violence of a prison colony. Some children weren’t allowed to naturally grow into what they should have been, incapable of flourishing properly in their environments, instead grown by survival.

Mugen knew what he could have been, for all his perceived ignorance. He could see a beautiful mother he’d never met in his eyes and hair, a stern but wise father in the set of his mouth and the curve of his jaw -- people whose lawless lives had cursed their child with their own mistakes. Sometimes when the day’s been long and Mugen’s mind begins to muddy and he finds himself in half dreams, he sees a graceful cleancut young man who’s earrings are violet and wrists and ankles unmarked. Maybe he wears his hair longer, maybe cropped shorter, but his gaze is soft and confident and strong in an entirely different way.

Like those evenings after an anciently long day, the herbs packed in Jin’s kiseru pipe evoked a similar drowsy state of mind.

Mugen wasn’t a stranger to smoke, but being so absolutely immersed within it almost felt like drowning -- something he also wasn't a stranger to. Old friends, smoke and water, crawling down his throat and trying to find him peace.

Reaching up to scratch his shaggy hair with a yawn, Mugen bumped the french hook of his left earring. Opening his eyes, he saw Spike watching the blue orb swing back and forth from his lobe.

“They make you look dainty.” Spike had said an hour ago, eyes bruised red with dilated blood vessels, his lips wrapped around Mugen’s stolen pipe. Mugen hadn’t said anything back, gazing passed him blankly.

He knew he wasn’t dainty, he was dirty and unhinged, a broken door to a world of brutality. Nothing dainty came from the places he’d been, pirate ships, prisons, facing firing squads, death, death too many times to count. He was the thing that leeched off dainty things.

He was the grittiness in the teeth of men leering at beautiful (dainty) brothel girls, or maybe the sticky blood dripping from a (dainty) ronin’s blade.

“Why do you wear them?” Now an hour later, Spike stared at the earrings, asked a question, and made an assumption, “Were they your mother's?”

“Do you know your mother?” Mugen asked in reply, watching Spike’s thin but soft lips purse over his bent cigarettes, burnt almost to the filter.

“Nah.”

“Me neither.” Mugen looked up at the ceiling fan, spinning so slowly. There were a lot of fans on this ship, some old and some new. They didn’t seem to make much of a difference. The air was yet still.

“Do you just wear them because the color matches your tats?” Spike grinned, spaceman accent heavy. Mugen could always tell when people weren’t from the lands he’d grown in, and Spike’s voice held dialects from so many different times and places it made Mugen’s head ache.

He didn’t dignify Spike’s words with a response, instead reached once more for the foreign lighter now sitting on the floor.

From across it, the ex-syndicate member from Mars watched with mismatching eyes, crushing his cigarette against the pop can at his side. Spike was an observant man. Those who seemed to be aware of nothing frequently saw everything.

Only now did Spike relax enough to allow for it to be so obvious that he was watching, watching Mugen flick the lighter on and off, not yet picking up the pipe at his feet. Spike secretly envied the natural ease at which the other man moved so gracefully. People who were so deliberate with their motions could tell when others moved without thought. Mugen had the grace of a wild animal that moved with instinct, whereas Spike forced a facade of careless ease that had become his armour.

It was why he’d mentioned daintiness earlier, having watched the rotations of Mugen’s delicate wrists and flutter of nimble fingers. It was incredible how strong the man was despite his elegance.

“You’re the elegan’ one, ya’ spidery poof.” One drunken night long ago Mugen had laughed sharply, when Spike had made a similar observation. “No grace here, ‘m dirty.”

The two men had known each other for as long as Spike had flown in the stars and Mugen had crossed the sea from his islands. A casual but connected friendship, no matter how many years passed between brief meetings, each time they seemed to see further into each other.

Spike could see past the dirt. Maybe it was his artificial eye that could see how much of that filth was self made, or his one of flesh and blood that saw the human in the man who seemed to try so hard to be a demon.

A similar sword fighter who tried so hard leave behind his own humanity was brought to mind. Vicious, the man representing what Mugen and his travelling ronin could be if they didn’t have the grounding presence of the samurai’s daughter. Cold, merciless, beautiful, cruel, powerful.

But watching Mugen stare into the lighter’s flame, it wasn’t a whole reflection of Vicious he saw there. The Ryukyuan relied too much on instinct rather than intellect or manipulation. Somehow by trying to reject his humanity, Mugen had become more human than anyone, the primal animalistic part of themselves that connects them to the earth.

“Check my communicator for me again?” Spike finally pulled Mugen out of his meditation, the flame flickering out.

Mugen pressed one calloused finger against the wristband that been tossed into the corner of the room, the hologram appearing with error alerts. He was ignorant and uneducated in the world technology and written language, but knew from Spike that this meant the device still had no signal. “Nothin’.”

“Damn.” Spike's complaint was lacklustre, there was no real rush. Nothing to miss out on, nowhere to be except trapped in the small section of the ship. The lock on the entryway was engaged, an easy-to-fix glitch in the Bebop’s emergency protocol that they’d been struggling with for weeks now. While the rest of the crew wasn’t back from sightseeing yet, Jet would easily be able to override the error from the console at the bridge when he arrived.

Until then, he got to enjoy the easy company of Mugen and the parcel of dense cannabis flower found nestled in the crate of Idem Earth supplies.

‘ _Bastard isn’t going to need this.’_ Spike had thought to himself when he’d first discovered the herbs.

The Bebop crew often visited this anachronistic sister planet of lagged advancements at the commission of a wealthy historian who enjoyed comparing Idem Earth’s curios with old Earth’s ancient artifacts. With the supplies packed up and Fey out putting a wrap on the arrest of a bounty head trying to find sanctuary in the far reaches of the solar system, rest of the crew dawdling in the local village, it was time to relax.

Being trapped in a storage room with a slinky faux-thug and bag of THC rich Idem Sativa wasn’t the worst way Spike could spend his off time.

The two men often drank together during their brief and infrequent visits, after Mugen would recognize that strangely shaped falling star in the sky and find his way to the ship so different from those he knew, but it was the first time smoking cannabis together.

Mugen had once before, “In a giant field, thought they were tengu but just some kinda cult--” He spoke detachedly, telling the story of fighting in a field on fire while the air grew so thick with smoke every inhale his head grew lighter and lighter until there was no point in fighting, mind floating away tied to a balloon rising up into the sky. It was the first time in his life he felt like he didn’t have to fight. He could just exist, laugh, be free.

The clouded room was slowly having a similar effect, though the two took their time and enjoyed the journey.

“The syndicate--” Spike knew that was a world Mugen would never be able to comprehend, being a man with no master, “--there was a small division of lesser drug trade. Knew a guy who peddled cannabis out to satellites, moons and stuff.”

“You ever try it before?”

“A few times.” Jet also was a known dabbler, which was why Spike felt no remorse for skunking up the storage room.

He normally disliked having slowed reflexes, hypervigilant under his sober guise of nonchalance, but somehow being trapped with this unpredictable man left Spike more comfortable than he’d been in far too long.

Perhaps it was because he felt there was no one else in the universe he’d been able to see himself in.

Twin souls, whose personalities warped in different ways to protect the same core.

“The syndicate...” Mugen rasped, finally tickling the bowl of the kiseru pipe with the lighter, two streams of smoke curling up into the air as he exhaled through his nose. “You like fighting, yeah?”

“I suppose.”

“You like it ‘cause you gotta like it.”

“It’s all I had.” Spike fought to be protected, to be alive, to not be alone. Getting stronger by scrapping in the streets and fighting his way out of the slums of Mars with knives and fists led him to the syndicate, where he learnt to rely on people, and then unlearnt it.

“You got your crew now, huh.”

He still wasn’t sure if he could ever fully trust the people he’d merged his life with. Knowing they’d likely never purposefully hurt him was different than trust -- different than reliance, faith. Those weren’t words Spike put value in anymore. He could trust himself, and have faith in the uncertainty of everything else.

“You have the ronin and that teahouse waitress.”

“They’re here and then they’re gone, here, then gone.” Mugen grunted, “Someday they aint comin’ back.”

“Yeah.”

The two men thought, _their companions probably had the same sentiment about them._

_Someday we aint coming back._

Spike rubbed his nose with an ash stained hand and with the other reached into his cigarette carton for one of the joints he’d rolled earlier. The paper was loose and wrinkled around the middle, Jet was always better at rolling than Spike.

“Your crew thinks you’re tough though, huh?” Mugen relit the pipe before handing the lighter back, ignoring the way Spike let his fingers reach too far and brush across the tattoos on his forearm. Spike grinned at the nonresponse, but then shrugged, “Something like that.”

“You ever wish you weren’t?” The words were drawled and almost dreamy.

“Wish I weren’t tough?”

“Wish you were--” Mugen coughed a plume of smoke, “Y’know, like Fuu.”

Spike didn’t know enough about the girl to follow his logic, “She seems tough.”

“Do you wish… do you wish you lived a life where you didn’t have to be tough from the start?” It was something that Mugen wanted to say so badly, and yet absolutely didn’t. That irking, nagging longing that the rough had for the concept of softness.

Spike knew it, was terribly familiar with it. Detaching himself from brutality by wielding guns instead of a sword, learning how to fight like a dancer and flow through the fight so he didn’t have to feel it. Entrenched in the ugliness but trying to lie to himself, keep himself sane as he wished for things he couldn’t have.

“I knew this woman…” The name ‘Julia’ crossed both men’s minds, the one woman Spike had ever really _known_ , “she taught me how to be gentle.”

“I aint never gonna be gentle. Not allowed.”

‘ _That doesn’t mean you don’t want to be.’_ Spike remembered being held, embraced, a hand cupping his face like he was the most beautiful, breakable treasure.

He finally lit the joint and inhaled deeply, lungs trained to enjoy the burn of smoke. Almost immediately Spike felt the effects, a pleasurable dizziness making him sag against the wall he was propped against.

Lips loosened, he murmured, “You’re like me, aren’t you.”

It was something neither had said out loud before.

Mugen’s piercing eyes stared, face betraying the wounded animal he was.

They sat gazing at each other for moment that dragged on, room growing hazy with smoke. The two small vents that kept them from suffocating to death in the locked room struggled to exchanged the smoke for air.

Spike took another hit, wet lips sticking to rolling paper.

Mugen sat up slightly and sat down the pipe filled with ash, reaching across to grab the joint from his fingers.

“Careful, might be a bit too hot and harsh for you.” Spike cautioned with a smile. The warmth of the euphoric high made him move like he was drifting across an autumn evening sky, floating on the breeze. His body unfurled and he slowly drifted closer to Mugen, plucking the joint back from him and lifting it to his own lips. Spike pulled the smoke through, and let it cool in his mouth and throat before breaking at least four of his secret rules by letting the autumn breeze pull him into the vagabond’s lap. Mugen didn’t make a snarky remark, instead observed Spike’s actions with a vague humorous curiosity.

Their lips met without romance, lust, or longing -- like a business exchange, Spike let his lungs slowly push the smoke out and into Mugen’s mouth, stray runoff dancing around their heads. The vagabond’s eyes slid shut.

Spike broke contact but didn’t pull away at first, their bodies not touching but far too close. He stayed in placed until Mugen exhaled and blinked his lids open, burning bloodshot gaze meeting his own.

“Smoother, right?” ‘ _Smooth. Soft. Delicate. Gentle. Don’t have to be rough. Doesn’t have to hurt.’_

“Smooth.” Mugen croaked. “I like women.”

Spike grinned, pulling away with a snort, “You told me once that you’re drawn to beautiful women. Like a leech. That they make you feel dirtier in comparison, but you feel like by having sex with them for a moment it’s like their beauty rubs off on you.”

“More like rubs me off.”

Spike gave him a knowing look, “So are you telling me you like women because you think I want you?”

“You just kissed me.”

“Hardly a kiss.”  

Mugen’s thumb hesitated towards his own lips, about to touch them but instead picked up the pipe once more and uncurled his legs to stand for the first time in an hour. His knees cracked and it took a moment to find the balance he almost never lost.

Hand trailing along the counter until he found the tin of cannabis they’d earlier painstakingly cut up with a sharp pair of scissors, he spoke as he heavy handedly packed the bowl, “Have you ever wanted a man?”

Spike knew Mugen couldn’t see his expression from behind him, and was glad, because for once he wasn't sure what his own face was exposing. He wouldn’t lie, but he wouldn’t tell the whole truth, “Yes.”

He wasn’t afraid of backlash. Not only did he know Mugen, he knew the society he was from. This offshoot of humanity had cycled back through history once more, and back and forth into the truths of sexuality and gender. It was different from planet to planet, but like on Mars, men wanting men was nothing atypical.

“Does it make you feel like less of a man?”

“No.”

Spike perhaps wouldn’t be called masculine, not with the shifting of his hips or the gentle curves of his face -- he could fight, and win, but even if he could beat another man, he never felt like more of a man. But in those few times he’d let his lips touch the that of his gender, he never felt like less of one.

Mugen turned around, easing down to sit once more. Wordlessly, Spike slid the lighter across the floor.

The Ryukyuan’s mouth still felt fuzzy and tasted sweet from Spike’s smoke, doubled once he lit the fresh bowl. Suddenly he felt his throat close on the too large hit, coughing violently he felt his nose run and eyes burn as he choked.

Bottle of water was pushed into his free hand, which Mugen accepted readily and chugged as soon as he could breathe again. The cold liquid soothed the sharp sting in his throat, but his lungs still ached.

“You already know I’m prepared to perform mouth to mouth CPR.” Spike said dryly, and Mugen snorted nearly spilling the water and coughing again. “What, now you can’t even handle a pipe? I can’t hold your hand through every hit. We still have a lot to smoke.”

“What you did was a few steps past hand holdin’.” Mugen rasped with a voice like gravel, “And there’s no way we can smoke _all_ of that.”

“Why not?”

Mugen had died twice, maybe three times already. Why not? What better way to meet the wandering Pantu once more, falling into the plane of death filthy and high.

 

* * *

 

They ate all the fruit and bread from the supply box.

‘ _Old bastard don’t need these.’_ Spike reasoned, ‘ _An apple is an apple, Earth Prime or Idem.”_

Spike nudged a pile of cores with his feet, which had long lost their shoes. Even his jacket and gun had been tossed to the side, finally transcending beyond childlike need and security.

Mugen had lost his hakama at some point, it now draped over the top of one of the crates beside the package of what was left of the uncut cannabis. His sword still rest against his back, as though tied to a support keeping his body upright.

Both men found themselves sinking into a delightful torpor, Spike lay boneless across the floor with his knees interlocking over Mugen’s who still sat against the crook of the counter.

“The ancient greeks held worship for intoxication.” A cigarette touched a bouncy flame as the lighter crackled to life with the flick of his thumb, “Some surviving sects still revere Dionysus and Bacchus, I ran into a couple around the Bohemian Junkheap.”

Mugen’s glazed gaze remained steady, though he of course knew little to none of what he spoke of. He barely knew the histories and religions of the lands he was from, let alone those beyond the hills or beyond the sky.

“They worshipped being drunk?”

“Dionysus was the god of wine and insanity.” Spike stared at the ceiling, taking a shallow puff of his cigarette, “Or still is, depending on your views. Certain views at the Junkheap replaced wine with sake and cannabis.”

“Want sake.” Mugen whined low in his throat, watching the slow fan on the ceiling swing in a useless circle.

“He was also a god of homosexuality and androgyny.”

“Still want sake.”

“You truly have the one track mind of an animal, don’t you.” Spike spoke with no hostility or cruelty, just the simple knowingness of an observant man.

“Could say the same.”

“We don’t have to, y’know.” He tapped the ash off his cigarette into the nearby pop can, “We can be complicated if we want to.”

“Shut up, Spiegel.” Mugen slowly slumped down, legs sliding underneath where they crossed Spike’s until he too lay on the floor, hair bunched up and fallen over his face, “You never used to care. Not a care in the damned universe. What changed?”

“Nothing changed. Just tired.” Spike followed the motions of the ceiling fan with his eyes, “You’ve never been so tired that you… you don’t care about not caring?”

He felt like he was hurtling towards his end, having never gotten a chance to complain or want something different. Just running to and from the past, never thinking about the now.

It would all be over before he knew it, why not care?

Shifting his legs where they lay across Mugen’s midsection, he continued, “I think I’m just touch starved.”

He’d never admit it, especially not so lightly, if he’d been sober. It came out easily though, just a casual notion -- deprived of contact, intimacy, physical touch -- maybe because Spike knew they’d both been starved since they were born.

“That what all this is about?” Mugen had never heard the term in his life, but somehow for once it made simple sense. Starved of touch. The self isolation even amongst allies that keep them more at arm’s length. Deprived of the tactile connections needed to sustain trust and comfort.

Sitting and laying together, legs crossing each other and lingering hands passing the lighter back and forth, it with the longest either had been close to another human being in a very long time.

It was different than the awareness of bodies while fighting or having sex, it was a calm and simple cohabitation of space.

Slowly, Mugen rolled onto his side, with one hand pulled off the sash binding his sword to his back and slid it away.

‘ _Is that what all this was about?’_ Mugen thought again to himself, taking in inventory of his physical and mental being. Maybe it was the drugs, but the feeling of being close to someone without needing to kill or fuck them was such a relieving, gentle thing.

 _You’ve got to be a real man._ And old woman had told him once, one of his earliest memories. _To survive out here, you’ve gotta grow up tough as beaten steel, boy._ She’d found him curled up in a small alley, stick thin and with dry skin and brittle hair. _Don’t let no one close. Take care of yourself, and say ‘fuck it’ to the rest of the world._

Spike had broken his own rules already, it was Mugen’s turn.

Blinking up at the ceiling, he asked quietly, “Why are you tired?”

“It always feels like I’m only half awake.” Spike whispered, like being high constantly, with none of the euphoria. Just barely keep one foot in reality.

“What’ll wake you up?”

“You ever woken up?” He answered with a question, “Really felt alive, for a moment?”

A line of pantu, gods of swamps and mud, crossed Mugen’s vision. His most primal state, his most alive having been while dying, struggling to live while water closed in around him until he broke through to the otherside.

“You aint ever gonna die.” Mugen snorted, perking up at the renewed scent of cannabis as Spike relit a stale joint, “Too tough.”

“You asked if I wish I weren’t, earlier.”

“Wish you weren’t tough?”

“Yeah.” Spike sat up a little, curling his spine and pulling his legs off of Mugen, “I do.”

For once, Mugen gave himself time process the words, letting himself understand before he spoke or acted. After mulling it over in the comfortable silence for a few moments, he pulled himself up to kneel in front of the smoking man.

Leaning forward he caught a drag of the joint in Spike’s fingers, lungs too worn out to protest against the harsh smoke. The other man had been right, an hour ago there was no way Mugen could have handled that kind of hit, but now he’d smoked himself passed limitations.

Passing limitations, with the slightest of movements, he pulled his lips away and let them rise up to press against Spike’s. It was a similarly strange feeling as being on the receiving end, this time feeling his breath be pulled into the other’s lungs.

The taller man leaned back, letting Mugen crowd him and curl around him. Somehow it still didn’t feel romantic or sexual for either, just another need met by the only person at the time who could fulfill it. Both for a moment thought about the other men in their lives they wish they could allow in like this, minds wrapped in the safe embrace of intoxication.

They didn’t want them like this exactly, not necessarily with mouths and smoke, but something similar and different.

As they parted Spike mumbled, “There’s something wrong with me.” _I’m not all the way here, ever. I’m lost. I’m struggling._

“Somethin’ wrong with everyone.” _No one’s whole._

Careful not to light Mugen’s wild hair on fire, Spike moved his hand away and let the other man move into some kind of embrace, some kind of uncaring collapse that allowed another body to sink to the floor alongside it. It wasn’t a hug, Mugen kept his arms pulled languidly to flop in each direction, but their bodies pressed together and Spike sighed.

Slowly and evenly, the air expelled from his lungs and stirred the clouds of smoke that hung around them.

The men were tired, wholly.

Spike reached to his throat and slipped a finger over the loop of his tie, tugging on it until he could slide it from around his neck and toss it to the corner where his jacket lay crumpled. It was freeing and somehow he felt he could breathe better, despite how raw his lungs and throat were and how much smoke clouded around him.

“We should fight.” Mugen yawned, eyes narrow slits under heavy eyelids. “Right now.”

“I couldn’t stand right now even if I wanted to.”

“I could fight in my sleep. Body knows what to do.” The Ryukyuan rolled slightly to the side, so he was looking at Spike’s too close face, but didn’t flinch, “Let’s fight.”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

Mugen was already up, body flopping like a marionette as his will forced him to his wobbly feet. Spike wasn’t certain the man wouldn’t reach for his sword, but luckily he remained in a weak but a wide stance in the center of the room. His head lolled sleepily before his jaw clenched and he bared teeth in a grin of challenge.

Spike watched unmoving. He was too tired, and had no motivation to spar with the vagabond.

It wasn’t uncommon for them to come to fisticuffs, usually friendly exercises, a way of letting off energy, and occasionally over a bar tab.  

“You’re insane.” Spike put the joint roach out against one of the several empty pop cans littered around them.

Mugen barked with laughter, “You’re weak.”

Grimacing, “Just ‘cus I don’t always want to be tough doesn’t make me weak.”

“You aint weak ‘cus of that, you’re weak cus you don’t wanna fight. Don’t gotta be tough to fight.”

“I don’t follow your logic.” Spike reached for his pack of cigarettes, and Mugen leaned forward and slapped them out of his hand faster than he thought either of them were capable of at the moment.

“Don’t gotta fight tough.” Mugen swayed, “C’mon.”

“You’re a pest.” It was a sentiment usually directed toward Spike himself.

“You’re a--” Before Mugen could finish his sentence, Spike swept one foot out with the intention of disbalancing him but Mugen quickly side stepped though nearly tripped himself up in the process.

Without giving it too much thought, because he couldn’t -- and Mugen was right, ‘ _body knows what to do’_ \-- Spike rolled to the side and kicked out once more.

His foot collided with Mugen’s as the other made for a similar attack, but with a life of it’s own Spike’s knee bend and hook around Mugen’s calf.

With the thought process of a drunken sailor but the instincts of an aged fox, the two used each other’s center of balance to right themselves while still locked in with swinging fists. Their high had them moving with heightened awareness of each moment of physical contact and the sensations in their flesh, consciousnesses located solely in their bodies as their brains turned off.

Mugen landed a pulled punch to Spike’s side but found himself angled to receive a what would have been a magnificent throw if it weren’t for the natural ease at which they both countered each other’s weight. Instead of landing on the floor, Mugen pushed himself across Spike’s back halfway through the throw and windmilled his legs until he fell to a crouch with the taller man’s shoulder gripped in a bearhug.

Both lower to the ground, knees bent and glossy red eyes narrowed, they both attempted to push the other away but instead resulted in them both toppling over.  
Heaving a breath and knowing Mugen would never be one to call a draw, Spike languidly pushed himself to his feet as Mugen kipped-up and let his mind go blank as he danced around his opponent.

As long seconds drew on and each man swiped and sashayed wobbly side steps, it became apparent that they truly were dancing more than fighting.

It wasn’t exactly graceful, they were still highly intoxicated and running on autopilot, but it felt like their bodies moved around each other with ease, reacting with perfect timing to each other, countered and countered again. Limbs interweaving, feet carrying them through improvised motions, each whirling and carrying through with their dance.

_Mugen’s laying in a field of burning plants, sparks flying through the air as the flames chewed their way closer and closer. Laughter. A fight turns into a festival. He feels freed. His sword falls from his fingers. He doesn’t have to fight._

A hand was clamped around his blue ringed wrist, but instead of maneuvering out of the hold, Mugen feet found the steady beat that had been quietly playing all along. Their hearts thudding, the faint sounds of the engines purring, footsteps tapping, not quite a song but having found the rhythm Mugen couldn’t let it go.

Caught up in the smoke and sensations, Spike let himself follow the transition. Instead of attacking weak points he took the openings in the other man’s guard as places to be, places to put himself as they spun and slid. Not his fists, his entire being. Arms interlocked, Spike pulled Mugen across his back but instead of flinging him or falling for the agile man’s tricks, he followed through with the roll. They both had found the rhythm, but every song comes to an end.

Mugen’s legs spun around as he arched his back, but suddenly found himself spiralling to the ground, pinned with the other man’s lesser weight focusing on his upper body.

“You’re down.” Spike grinned, but was quickly pulled into Mugen’s grasp, with his arm twisted behind his back and face pushed to the floor, a hot breath against his ear.

“You’re not tough.”

In an instant, Spike twisted his spine to roll his hips into Mugen, kneeing up until the difficult angle freed his arm and he could spin in the space between them, facing his opponent. He was still pinned, but found some victory in their new position.

“Didn’t want to fight to begin with.”

“Always gotta fight.”

Spike stared up at him, and Mugen stared him down. The eye of flesh and blood, that was one Mugen could understand. The eye of technology was somehow like looking into those of a dead dog. Foreign and empty. He wondered how he looked in those mismatched eyes.

“You gonna get off?”

“You gonna get me off?”

Spike gave him a bored look, ignoring the double entendre. Mugen finally let up the pressure he was applying to keep him still, wry smile wiped off as Spike quickly lashed out and toppled him over.

With a deft hand, he plucked his pack of smokes off the ground while flipping his body up to straddle Mugen’s waist. Pulling his emergency book of matches from his pant’s pocket, he kept Mugen’s arms restrained at his sides with his thighs while lighting the end of one crumpled cigarette. The sounds of the match hitting the strike strip with a loud pop was more satisfying than usual.

“Are we done?” Spike spoke with a breath of smoke. The rush of adrenaline and thudding of his heart added to the sudden new jolt of nicotine. Circumstances lended to him feeling both sobered up and higher than ever.

Mugen let his neck fall, back of his head resting against the floor. He didn’t reply, just exhaled with a small smile and let his eyes slide shut with exhaustion.

Finally, Spike climbed off the man, footing unsteady as his mind woke up and realized it barely knew how to make a body stand up. Despite this, the physical exercise from their sparring had him revved up with nowhere to go.

The tight confines of the storage room were finally starting to affect him. He was wishing for open stars or an open field or open _anything_ , just not that closed damn door.

Spike stretched his arms and then dug his heels in and stretched his legs, carelessly ashing his cigarettes onto Mugen’s shirt. “Getting stir crazy.”

“Thought you were tired?” Mugen mumbled without opening his eyes.

“Well now I’m all riled up.”

“Hmm.” The Ryukyuan hummed. “I’m hungry.”

“We ate all the fruit in the supply box.”  

“This is a storage room and you aint got no food stored?”

“We barely ever use this one.” Spike wobbled with watery legs as he paced the small room. Truly, there were only three crates inside with them, one of which being the Idem supplies they’d already ransacked. “Mostly stuff Jet doesn’t want just sitting around the living quarters.”

“Like?”

“I think this one has some cleaning supplies.” Spike kicked the closest box.

Mugen groaned, hand rising to rub at his eyes. They’d grown sore from so much time spent exposed to heavy amount of air pollution, not to mention red and puffy from the cannabis. “I’m _hungry._ ”

“Jet’ll be back soon.” And it will all be over. Both men felt a sting of disappointment despite their various discomforts. This, whatever this was, would be over soon. This break from their realities.

Slowly propping himself up on his elbow, Mugen glanced at the man standing a few feet away. While his stomach hungered, his neglected spirit caged inside himself starved and screamed.

“How long have you been torturing yourself?” Spike had asked once, laying in the grass staring up at the stars he knew so well. “You don’t have to be this.”

This. What was he?

More than hungry.

More than rough.

He was like Spike. He was so much like him that their differences in that moment fell away and Mugen properly understood what he meant about softness. A mind and body weren’t supposed to live the way they lived, and by doing so only made the things they didn’t have all that more obvious and wanted.

_Gentleness._

Mugen blinked. That old woman came to mind, not her words, but the way she knelt and tenderly brushed his hair out of his sunken eyes, the gentleness of her touch.  _You’ve gotta grow up tough as beaten steel._

He’d survived, but at what cost?

How long would he have deluded himself into believing this was how he was meant to be, if Spike hadn’t shown him what they both wanted?

There were many questions Mugen hadn’t dared think about, things that his mind rejected. He lived life on autopilot. Thinking wasn’t his strong suit. These thoughts haunting him as heavy dreams, so real and painful but too out of reach to process. 

He met Spike’s strange eyes, “Some day we’ll wake up.”

The other frowned, confused, “Hm?”

“We’ll wake up.” Mugen repeated, closing his eyes as a beep sounded out and the storage room door cracked open, fresh air rushing in as cold crisp tidal wave, "When we don't gotta be tough." 

_We could be gentle._

 


End file.
